Dimension X in Stranger Things: the old name of the Abyss, and the bridge
Universe · The Abyss · The bridge
An office name, a stage play, then a word said out loud. In this article: where Dimension X comes from, what Dustin reads in the notes, why the reflection is frozen on November 6, 1983, and why the creatures were not born in that reflection.
Dimension X is not a third world added at the end. It is the working name, in the writers' bible, of the place the group ends up calling the Abyss. The dark reflection of the town is the bridge.
The essentials
- The working name: Dimension X, in the bible, before the finale was shot
- The name said on screen: the Abyss, chosen by Dustin from the game
- The reflection of the town: a bridge, opened on November 6, 1983
- The far shore: another planet, not a copy of Hawkins
Contents
Markers
| Name | What it is |
|---|---|
| Dimension X | the writers' working name, and the name in the play |
| The Abyss | the name Dustin says in the final season |
| The bridge | the reflection of the town, opened on November 6, 1983 |
| The center of the circle | the lab, at the center of the wall |
| The far shore | where the creatures come from, and where Henry was sent |
The table separates three things that get mixed as soon as you say «the other side». The old name, the name of the show, and the corridor between them do not point to the same place.
The T-shirt of the maw: the beast that crosses the bridge, without having been born there.
In the shopWomen's pink T-shirt Demogorgon flower24,90 €See the product
A working name, not one more place
Dimension X is the name Matt and Ross Duffer said they used when they built the mythology, from the first season on. Ross Duffer tied it, in an interview, to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reference: the world one of their enemies comes from. It is not a joke added afterward. It is the name of the file, before the story had a word to say in front of the camera.
They also said they had wanted to reveal that bridge much earlier, around the second season, and then stepped back because the season was already too full. The name therefore traveled for years in the notes, while viewers had only the reflection of the town in front of them.
Matt Duffer added that this elsewhere is, technically, another planet. Ross confirmed it. That sentence is not turned into a star chart. It serves one thing: the Abyss is not Hawkins painted blue.
The words Dimension X are therefore not a fan theory that arrived after the finale. It is the other way around. The finale gave another name to an idea that was already in the bible. Looking for a third realm on top of the Abyss is counting the same place twice.
What the group reads in the notes
In the chapter titled The Bridge, Dustin understands that the wall around the reflection forms a circle, and that the center of that circle is the lab. He expects a machine to destroy. He finds Brenner's notes. Those notes describe a bridge, a passage between two points, not a neighboring country with its own streets.
The science class, earlier in the same season, already put the word in the students' mouths: a wormhole, explained in class. The show therefore walks the path both ways. First a lesson. Then the lab notes, which say the same shape.
Dustin calls the far shore the Abyss, because in the role-playing game it is a realm of chaos. The name is not written on a door. He is the one who sets it, the way the group has always named what it did not understand, with the vocabulary of the basement table.
This chapter does not say the reflection was a lure with no danger. It says what it is made of: a passage. You can get lost, die, walk for whole seasons, and never have reached the place the beasts set out from.
The bridge, frozen on November 6, 1983
The date is the one of Will's disappearance. That night, Eleven, pushed by Brenner who has her search for Henry, makes contact with a beast. The contact opens the bridge. The reflection of the town freezes on that day: the same houses, the same stopped hour, a heavy sky, lightning, particles in the air.
Before that night, this reflection does not exist. It is not a twin town that had been waiting forever under Hawkins. It is a consequence. The lab was looking for Henry. The researcher touched something else. The corridor opened onto the town.
So you can walk through a copy of your own street and believe you are «on the other side of the world». You are in the corridor. The other world is farther, at the end. Seasons 1 to 4 show almost only the corridor, because the characters do not yet have the word for what comes next.
The Upside Down, in the mouths of the people who live there, names that reflection for a long time. The article does not take the word away from them. It specifies what the final season makes of it: the everyday name of the bridge, not the name of the planet on the far side.
The buildable figure, come from the far shore and not from the frozen streets.
In the shopBuildable figure Demogorgon 158 pieces24,90 €See the product
The far shore is not a copy of the town
The creatures are not born in the frozen streets. They come from the far shore. The beast of the first season, the dogs of the second, the bats of the fourth, the mass that possesses bodies: their origin is on that side, not in an attic in Hawkins.
Vecna is not the Mind Flayer, and the Mind Flayer is not the Demogorgon. The first is a man sent to that shore, who changes there. The second is the bodiless mind one meets there. The third is a beast. Putting them in the same bag because they cross the same bridge is mixing up the traveler, the sea, and the ship.
Henry knows that elsewhere before the massacre at the lab. The play The First Shadow shows him as a child, and it uses the name Dimension X. Eleven sends him there in 1979, when she pushes him back. So he does not arrive in a reflection of 1983 that does not exist yet. He arrives on the far shore. The bridge will not open until four years later.
That is the point that makes the calendar readable. 1979: a man is thrown onto the other planet. November 6, 1983: a bridge forms, a copy of the town, because that man was touched again from a distance. Without that order, you think the reflection was always there.
What the play had already named
The First Shadow does not replace the chapters. It puts on stage the name the bible used. The show's audience did not need the play to follow the five seasons. They need it afterward, to understand that Dimension X was not invented on the day of the finale.
The writers told Polygon: the bridge toward another dimension was in the mythology document of season 1. The placeholder was called Dimension X. The Abyss is the name of the final season. Two labels, one territory.
Not every scene of the play is told here, nor the ship, nor Nevada, as if this were a guide to the theater. That would be another article, and several press details do not overlap enough to sew them into one story. What is stable is kept: the name, Henry's childhood, the link with the far shore.
Someone who has not seen the play can still hold the useful sentence. Dimension X equals the Abyss, under its old name. The reflection of Hawkins equals the bridge. Three words, two places.
What still gets mixed up
Mixing the bridge and the far shore makes you think that killing a beast in a frozen street empties the other planet. That is not what the notes say. The street is a passage. The planet is the source.
Mixing Dimension X with one more secret world means looking for an address that does not exist. In what the writers have described, there is no fourth set behind the Abyss that would still be called Dimension X.
Mixing Henry and the mind that changed him makes one villain where the show keeps two, plus the beasts. The bridge lets them through. It does not sum them up.
And mixing the date of the bridge with «forever» erases November 6, 1983. That night is the start of the reflection, not the start of the far shore. The far shore is older. Henry touched it as a child.
Two places, not threeIf a sentence talks about Dimension X as a place still never shown after the Abyss, it counts wrong. The Abyss is that place, once the group has given it its game name.
The poster of the same beast, so it is not confused with a map of the town.
In the shopDemogorgon poster19,90 €See the product
TakeawayDimension X est le nom de travail de l'Abîme, pas un lieu supplémentaire. Le reflet de Hawkins est un pont, ouvert et figé le 6 novembre 1983. Les créatures et Henry viennent de l'autre rive. Henry y est envoyé en 1979, avant que le pont existe. La pièce emploie déjà Dimension X. La dernière saison dit l'Abîme.
Frequently asked questions
Is Dimension X a third world?
No. It is the old name, in the writers' bible and in the play, of what the final season calls the Abyss.
Is the reflection of the town that world?
No. The reflection is the bridge, opened on November 6, 1983, frozen on that day. The far shore is at the end of the bridge.
Where does the word Abyss come from?
From Dustin, in the chapter The Bridge, out of the role-playing game. The word is not carved on a door. He chooses it while reading Brenner's notes.
When does Henry arrive there?
In 1979, when Eleven pushes him back. The bridge to Hawkins does not exist yet. It exists from November 6, 1983.
Are the creatures born in the frozen streets?
No. They come from the far shore. The bridge lets them into the copy of the town.
Do you have to have seen the play?
Not in order to follow the story that aired. Yes, in order to know that the name Dimension X already existed on stage, before it was explained at the last moment.
